Time Crisis: Retribution
by Lilium00
Summary: The ghosts of an unresolved past had come back with a vengeance. When all those important to him had decided to go on an all-out war with one another, whose side would Giorgio choose?
1. Salutamu

**【** **Time Crisis: Retribution】**

 **Author's Note:**

\- The world needs more TC fics :D

\- This fic was co-written with Striga.

\- As of the time of this fic's publication, the TC4 character profiles in the TC wikia are either somewhat mistranslated or missing pieces of information D:! For those of you who understand Japanese, I strongly recommend reading the profiles from the game's official site instead. Someone should do a proper translation for the wikia... T-T (Or I dunno, PM me if you have an account there and I'd be more than happy to supply you with a full translation that you can simply Copy-Paste.)

\- For the purpose of this fic, a little info on Giorgio's background:

According to the game's official site, when Giorgio was 10, the Bruno Family was wiped out due to infighting (NOT because the Italian Authorities wiped it out as the wikia says). He was then adopted by a police officer, leading to him becoming a police officer himself.

For those interested in Giorgio's full bio, here's a full translation by Striga:  
striga-memo. tumblr.  
com/private/174532929459/tumblr_p9r6u2wVvL1xvd6vz  
(^remove the spaces. I can't seem to post links)

\- I'm a language and culture freak, so bear with/have fun with me xD. Italian and Sicilian were researched from online language sites and YouTube (Thank you language channels! You're awesome!). As for French, I'm still a beginner, but I'm totally hoping to become fluent in it in future! If I still manage to somehow butcher the languages despite my research, feel free to point it out.

\- All OCs were made for the purposes of the plot. Enjoy! ^^

*Thanks to June Ellie for grammar checking!

* * *

 **Disclaimer:**

This is a work of fiction and has no connection to any military or law enforcement agencies. Names, characters, business, events and incidents are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or deceased, or actual events is purely coincidental. Any trademarks appearing in this work are the property of their respective owners.

* * *

 **【** **Chapter 1: Salutamu】**

 _Unknown building, Palermo, Sicily 03:18_

The room, dark and wide, was cluttered with a maze of cables and devices, all set up to fulfill one single purpose.

A well-dressed man sat alone before a computer at the desk, the tapping of his fingers hitting the keys the only sound in the otherwise quiet room. The monitor's cool electronic light glowed softly against the lines on his aging skin as he worked, but sharply against the steel of the prosthetic right arm hidden under the sleeve of his expensive tailored suit. His fingers typed away tirelessly, no matter how heavy his eyelids felt, no matter how much his wrists hurt from overworking.

Behind him, crates sat stacked from the floor to the ceiling, the cold metal of the weapons in them mirroring the emotion in the man's old but sharp eyes.

 _The VSSE had done him a great injustice, and they were going to pay for it. He would see to it that they did._

Behind him, a young man stood watching at the room's doorway, his fair complexion shadowed by the hallway's backlight. He worried for the older man's health, but he too knew that this must be done.

Banishing every last shadow of hesitation from his mind, he tightened his grip on the gun in his hand.

* * *

 _Unidentified enemy warehouse, Milan, Italy 13:36_

A succession of shots rang out through the air, joining the cacophony of other gunshots ricocheting around the concrete walls of the warehouse. As the magazine clicked empty in his hand, VSSE agent Giorgio Bruno took cover behind a row of crates and reloaded the gun with swift, automated movements, unperturbed by the bullets whizzing by just above his head. While he worked on the cartridge, he took the opportunity to review the situation.

There were three armed men across the room; one by a couple of drums, another by a metal beam, and a third one on the second floor. He glanced across the aisle. Evan was taking fire as well, but seemed to be holding out well otherwise.

A shot, a scream, a rattling crash on steel—his partner had taken down their upstairs attacker. Seizing his chance, Giorgio darted over to a different spot behind cover, stood up and fired at the remaining two.

His aim, honed by a decade's worth of training, didn't fail him. One, two shots, and the last assailants before them fell one after another, but the battle wasn't over yet. As if falling into the steps of a well-rehearsed dance, he whirled around to face his partner, sighted his last target and pulled the trigger.

Evan gasped as the bullet from Giorgio's gun grazed his cheek, before effectively burying itself in an enemy sniper hiding on the scaffolds far behind him, sparing the younger man a brand-new bullet hole in his back. Giorgio watched the sniper crash onto the crates underneath the platform, standing deathly still as the residual echoes of the gunshot faded into nothingness. As a dense silence descended upon the warehouse, he lowered his gun.

"That should be the last of them," Giorgio said coolly. After giving his surroundings one last scan, he re-engaged his gun's safety catch and reached for his earpiece.

"Agent Martin, this is Agent Bruno reporting. All enemies here have been dispatched, and the warehouse containing the illegal weapons is secured." He paused. "Like the two previous warehouses, the enemy leader doesn't seem to be here. We'll be waiting for further instructions."

A sigh of relief could be heard from the other side of the communication device as Agent Sarah Martin, the intelligence operative usually in charge of providing support for the pair of agents, replied.

"Agent Bruno, Agent Bernard! First of all, good work once again. It's good to see that your teamwork has been improving."

Her voice was slightly fuzzy through the speaker, but the jubilation in it was apparent. Missions handled by the VSSE, a special international intelligence agency tirelessly combatting terrorism across the globe, were always highly risky. Even if they only allowed the best, most skilled personnel of various other security organizations to join them, there was never a guarantee of survival in their line of work, and the completion of any mission was a good reason to celebrate.

"It's a shame that it seems to be another dead end. Nevertheless, we'll send our team there to investigate and hopefully find some clues about the perpetrators behind this weapons trade," she continued, the tense voice which she had been speaking with throughout the mission ebbing away into a gentler, more comforting one.

"We'll take care of matters from here. A helicopter will be sent to pick you up, so stay put."

"Roger that," Giorgio replied, ending the call and finally turning his attention back to Evan.

" _Merde!_ Giorgio, how did you do that!?" Evan exclaimed as he shoved his gun into its holster and walked over to him, having reluctantly bottled up his surprise to refrain from interrupting Giorgio's conversation. "You don't just shoot a nearly invisible target from that far away and manage to hit it!"

Evan didn't try to hide the awe in his voice. He was a relatively new addition to the VSSE—he had joined them last year, to be exact—and had been assigned as Giorgio's partner from the get-go. While he had grown into his current job, making it a point to keep his cool at all times just like his senior, he still tended to loosen up when something particularly exciting came his way. Perhaps it was due to his relative youth, but his playful side would sometimes get the better of him and bubble up, the brightness in his eyes not unlike that of an overenthusiastic child's. The number of times Giorgio had saved his life in unbelievable ways boggled him.

"It's what all our training's for. It's a long road, but your diligence should get you there someday," Giorgio replied nonchalantly, swiftly placing his gun back into its holster in one effortless motion.

"At least I certainly hope you will. Or I'll have to look for someone else who can keep up with me," he smirked.

"Is keeping up with you even _possible_?" Evan rolled his eyes. "You're practically a tractor!"

Upon being paired up with Giorgio for the first time last year, Evan, young and cocky and proud as he was, had believed that he would eventually catch up and surpass the veteran. But the more he worked with Giorgio and saw what he could do, the more it seemed like an absurd idea. Sure, he was the better swimmer between the two of them, owing to the amount of time he had spent near—or in—the water since childhood, and was arguably more of a people person than the senior agent, but Giorgio could beat him at virtually everything else.

He remembered the time he had challenged the 'old man' ("I'm not even 30 yet", Giorgio had grumbled) to a simple race around the HQ training grounds, confident that victory was easily within his reach. Instead, what he'd found at the end of the race was Giorgio watching him struggle from the finish line, a smug look on his face. It hadn't stopped Evan from challenging him again, much to the detriment of their early days working together, but a lot had happened since then, and their history had seen rivalry turn into grudging respect, and then into mutual cooperation and one-sided admiration.

"You know, sometimes I think I don't even _deserve_ you as a partner!" Evan blurted out, meaning it as a self-deprecatory joke. But then it struck him that it might be true, objectively speaking, and the junior agent fell silent and looked away. It didn't go unnoticed by his partner, though.

"Evan, look here."

Evan glanced up at the call, and felt silk against his cheek as Giorgio gently wiped away the blood from his grazed skin with a handkerchief.

"Ah, of course you'd have that with you—what a gentleman," he laughed, pushing his hand away playfully. Giorgio's forehead creased at the interruption, but considering his job done, he tucked the cloth away and stepped back.

"You're not alone in this, alright? Provided that you do your best, I'm always willing to help you as your partner. And so far, I think you're doing quite well… Certainly much, much better than when we first met."

Evan was taken aback. Was Giorgio praising him? That certainly didn't happen very often, and he would be lying if he said that he wasn't moved by the encouragement.

"…Whatever, _tonton_ (uncle)," he said after a pause, pulling away and turning his back on Giorgio. He paused nervously before continuing, lightly fiddling with one of his necklaces.

" _Eh bien_ (Well)… I don't know how much I can do for you, but just know that you can ask me for help with anything anytime too, alright? I'll do what I can."

Giorgio smiled. Shortly after, the familiar whirring of rotor blades was heard outside the warehouse.

"I guess our ride's here. Let's get going," he told Evan as he made his way to the exit. Evan grinned cheekily and followed closely behind.

"You know, you should really tell me more about yourself sometime. Like, from before you joined the VSSE," Evan mused playfully. Then, with a snicker, he added, "I'd love to hear about all you had to go through to get to this point!"

"Maybe some other time," Giorgio replied dryly as he kept on walking.

" _Allez~_ (Come on~) Please? That's the fifth time you've said that. Are you ever going to tell me?" Evan insisted. He caught up with Giorgio and stuck out in front of him, grinning playfully.

"No secrets between partners, right?"

And so Evan continued to prod him on various topics throughout the ride back to the VSSE HQ. What he failed to notice was Giorgio's slightly darkening expression every time the subject of his past came up.

* * *

 _That night, residential area, Milan 02:34_

The mission's report had been compiled and submitted, all post-mission formalities had been handled, and a rewarding, well-deserved dinner had been eaten. The long, busy day was finally done.

Giorgio walked down the deserted streets of the residential area, its emptiness a far cry from its daytime bustle. The shops lining the ground floor of the buildings along the street were all closed, their windows turning into pitch-black mirrors in the darkness—much like most, if not all the rooms overhead. Only the streetlights hummed quietly in the night, the flicker of moths dancing by their glow the only movement. The district was asleep.

Giorgio walked along the pavement briskly. The exhaustion from the day's mission had caught up to him, and he was more than ready to crash onto his bed the moment he arrived at his apartment.

As he made his way home, he thought back on recent events.

It hadn't even been two weeks since he and Evan had returned from their mission in the US. They had worked together with the US military to eliminate the Terror Bites, a secret biological weapon that had fallen into the hands of 'terrorists'. The mastermind of the attack turned out to be traitors from the US army itself; the truth could be shocking at times.

Almost immediately after the completion of that mission, he had suddenly been informed that there were suspicious activities and illegal weapon trades by an unidentified organization taking place around Milan, the city he was living in, which naturally also happened to be the city whose safety was under his surveillance as an agent. The VSSE analysts feared that the weapons trade might be another possible terrorist threat, and had thus advised taking immediate action.

The regional HQ had then decided that they might as well send him, and therefore Evan as well, simply by virtue of him being Giorgio's partner. He felt a little bad for the Frenchman, being assigned somewhere else right after he'd returned to his home country.

Well, he supposed that a company-paid trip to beautiful Italy, with a reservation at a five-star hotel and access to all the delicious pizza and pasta he could ever want, had more than made up for the trouble. He scoffed to himself, mildly amused. The smug brat must be enjoying himself.

Speaking of Evan, his question in the afternoon made its way back into Giorgio's mind.

His past… Coated in fire and blood. It wasn't something that he was very proud of, or even wanted to recall at all.

His mind went back to 19 years ago, and he remembered. Flashes of burning, crashing timber and gunfire that always sounded far too close, punctuated by screams of terror and raging grief, all wrapped up in a chaotic mess of shadows, blending into thick, black smoke, its darkened breath powdering soot into bloodstained walls…

No, he thought to himself as he shoved the memories away. The day that he left his hometown, he had made a promise to himself to leave everything behind and start anew. The unpleasant past was, after all, something to be brushed under the rug, something to be forgotten. He had even made sure to request that his employers keep any information regarding his childhood classified as private information unless it was absolutely necessary to disclose it. He certainly hoped that Evan would lose interest and stop pryiー

"…?"

Giorgio's thoughts were interrupted as he arrived at his apartment and was about to reach for the doorknob.

 _The door was slightly ajar._

His fitful mood drained out of him immediately as he instinctively switched back to high alert, backing away from the room's entrance.

Giorgio always double-checked his door's lock whenever he left his room. If there was a burglar, he could still be in there. But considering he worked for the VSSE, the possibility that the room currently housed a much more dangerous enemy wasn't that far-fetched either.

His hand reflexively slid towards the grip of his gun, hidden carefully in his red coat. But thinking that it wouldn't be effective to start a gunfight in his apartment room with all the indoor obstacles, as well as to avoid alerting his neighbors, he allowed his fingers to slip past his gun to the folding knife he had in his back pocket.

With great caution, Giorgio quietly opened the door and slipped inside, making sure to enter soundlessly. As he proceeded into the dark room, however, he was surprised that whoever had broken in had no intention of hiding.

The silhouette of a man in a suit stood in front of the living room window, looking out at the lonely streets. The moonlight lit a silvery contour around him, glinting on his metallic right hand—but regardless of the apparent disability, he stood with the dignity and composure of a man of great stature. He didn't seem to be carrying any weapon, but Giorgio didn't let his guard down.

"That wasn't very nice of you to enter without knocking. Who are you?" He spoke with a steady voice, making his presence known to the stranger standing in his apartment.

The unknown man noticed his presence, and turned to face him. To Giorgio's surprise, the voice that addressed him was disturbingly familiar.

" _Salutamu_ (Hello), Giorgio. It's been a long time."

Giorgio frowned deeply, tightening his grip on his knife.

Sicilian? He hadn't known anyone who spoke that language for a while, and certainly not in a voice that stirred up almost forgotten memories in the corner of his mind.

As the man turned around, he revealed not only a prosthetic right arm, but also burns and scars that crept out of his neatly buttoned collar, spreading across the right half of his face. His right eye and the area around it had also been replaced by cold steel, inspiring both awe and fear. He had definitely not seen anyone with such an unusual appearance in recent times.

Still, Giorgio felt as though he knew the man. His mind grasped frantically for the wisp of recognition that the stranger's voice had triggered in him, searching his almost inhuman face for any clue to his identity. Then it struck him, and his tense expression melted into astonishment when he finally recognized the man under all the scarring and age. His grip on his knife loosened.

" _Zu_ (Uncle) Salvatore…?" He asked, hesitation creeping into his voice.

The stranger smiled at him, and all at once Giorgio felt a wave of relief wash over him like a great flood, taking away all of his uncertainty. The man was old, and heavily disfigured, but underneath all the wrinkles and the steel, he could tell from that posture and that comforting fatherly tone, everything that he was all too familiar with, that it was his very own uncle.

The man who stood before him was none other than Salvatore Bruno, his father's younger brother. The man who had always stood by his father's side, whose hand was on his shoulder when he came home trying not to cry from a grazed knee, whose voice placated his mother when she caught him trying to sneak a couple of _cannoli_ from the kitchen with his little cousin Tonio. And most of all, he was a man whom Giorgio thought had gone down with the flames nearly two decades ago, on the night he lost every last shred of his old life.

None of Giorgio's acquaintances would say that he was an emotional man, but even so, the rush of fond memories and unresolved loss knocked him off-balance, and his emotions threatened to overflow. He held them back. His uncle spoke.

"It certainly took me a while to find you, and all of my faith to even believe that you were still alive after that chaotic incident at the Bruno mansion. And yet here you are." Salvatore smiled with genuine contentment. He seemed truly happy to be reunited with his nephew. "I'm pleased to see that you have grown into a fine young man."

Giorgio couldn't argue with his uncle's statement. Glimpses of that fateful night 19 years ago flashed through his mind again. A night of fire and blood. It was the night that the entire Bruno Family, one of the oldest and most influential mafia family based in Palermo, Sicily, had collapsed in on itself.

People who had considered each other brothers shot at one another, turning the entire turf around the boss' mansion into a war zone. The fire that broke out at some point of the districtwide gunfight raged on for the whole night, feeding off the scattered corpses on the streets, while the phantoms of its reflection danced upon endless pools of blood staining the shot-up concrete. In the morning, when the fight had died down, the news spread across town in a frenzy. They had killed all the men, women, and children. There were no survivors.

Or, well, there shouldn't have been. But the truth was that, at the time, the authorities had found one living body in the field of cadavers—the boss' 10-year-old son, Giorgio Bruno, dragged out half-dead from the charred ruins.

Yes, little Giorgio was the heir to a mafia bossーsomething he certainly didn't want to flaunt considering his current line of work.

He looked up at Salvatore again, who still stood there, smiling. At this point, he was reasonably sure that he was not seeing a ghost, nor was he hallucinating from fatigue. It seemed that he wasn't the only survivor of that incident after all.

Knowing that his uncle had no intention to fight, Giorgio folded his knife and returned it to his pocket.

"Zu Salvatore, I thought I was the only survivor!" he started, his voice trembling more than he had expected it to.

He didn't want to accept it, but he was probably more shaken up than he'd care to admit. A part of him, perhaps a memory of his younger self, wanted him to throw himself straight into his beloved uncle's arms, like he had always used to when he needed some comfort. But he had to keep himself together for now.

"Are there… Is there anyone else…?"

"…"

Salvatore was quiet for a moment, before looking away sadly.

"It's unfortunate, but no. I've looked everywhere, but it seems that only you, me, and quite luckily enough, little Tonioーyour cousin, if you remember him, survived. I myself was in a coma for 15 years and almost didn't make it."

"…"

Giorgio looked away, his mind scrambling to process the information.

Antonio Bruno, Salvatore's son. He had been a dear childhood friend and Giorgio's self-proclaimed 'escort' back then. He couldn't help feeling a little happy at the news. But other questions needed answering, so he turned back to his uncle.

"Well, Zu, what are you planning to do now? If you and Tonio would like to start a new life, I'll do everything Iー"

Salvatore raised a hand to interrupt his offer. "Thank you for the kind offer, Giorgio, but I'll have to decline. I only came to inform you that we have some…unfinished business."

"…...?"

Giorgio studied his uncle cautiously. Salvatore moved towards the table by the windowsill, where a half-filled glass of wine sat undisturbed. He raised his right hand and ran it along the edge of the glass contemplatively, as if engrossed in carefully choosing his next words. His finger made a metallic clink as it touched the surface of the fragile receptacle.

"Say, Giorgio. They said our family was torn apart by infighting," he said slowly, deliberately, his finger absently tapping away at the rim of the glass. The easy smile had completely faded from his visage. "By a kind of civil war, between our family's rightful leaders and the power-hungry wolves hiding within our own circle." The clinking stopped, and Salvatore turned to look straight into Giorgio's eyes.

"Now what if I told you that that was _not_ the truth?"

Salvatore's hand returned to his side, hidden in his coat. He seemed to have anticipated the confusion forming on his nephew's face. He continued.

"What if I told you that, instead, an outside force had been pulling the strings, aiming for our Family's downfall?"

Giorgio's eyes narrowed. He didn't know what his uncle was talking about. The events of that night had always been too traumatizing, too painful for him to recollect and carefully think over. He had been content to leave it as a dusty memory, to shove it in the furthest, deepest corner of his mind like old things meant to be forgotten. He found himself hesitating, unsure if he wanted to open that box of thorns which he had painstakingly buried.

Salvatore didn't give him the chance to back down.

"It was none other than the organization you're currently working for, Giorgio. It was the VSSE, and I know the exact man who did it."

Giorgio snapped out of his deliberation, doubting his ears. Did his uncle just say "VSSE"?

"Zu, that's… It can't be true! That night everyone shot at each other on their own volition. I saw it with my own eyes!" He retorted, his shock more evident than he'd have liked.

He _had_ seen it himself. People he knew worked for his father, eyes cold as steel as they pointed their guns at his mother screaming at him to run, at his sister, his little brother. The sound of gunfire rang in his head like he had heard them in the suffocating flames just yesterday, and Giorgio felt sick to his stomach. Salvatore looked at his nephew with sympathy, and shook his head sadly.

"Oh, _càru_ (dear) Giorgio. Do you seriously think that a bout of infighting would end with the entire family _so cleanly_ wiped out? Moreover, do you think that our brothers," he said, a slight fluctuation in his steady voice, "Known through the city, the countryside, as the most fiercely loyal among all, could even start an internal dispute in the first place?" Salvatore swept an arm across the room, as if gesturing towards their entire Family like they were present before the two of them. "They could not. You know your own people."

"…"

"Ever since I awoke from my coma 4 years ago, I have been gathering information. All those years ago, someone had been there to deliberately destroy the Bruno Family, starting from the spreading of false rumors to rile up the brothers, to mingling in during that night's shootout to ensure that no one survived," Salvatore said, a quiet but rising anger vibrating through his words.

"And let me tell you, I have finally uncovered the identity of the man responsible for our Family's downfall."

Giorgio couldn't contain his confusion. In fact, he didn't know what to think of Salvatore's words. He looked away and remained silent, stunned by the mental storm that was going on in his mind as he struggled to piece all the new information together. Not waiting for his response, Salvatore continued.

"I came here today because I feel obliged to inform you that we're planning a reprisal. I won't stop until the Family is rightfully avenged—I owe that much to your father when I could save neither him nor your mother and siblings that night," Salvatore said, walking to the living room's coat stand to gather his hat and scarf.

"From the look of things, it seems that I have successfully earned the VSSE's attention with the recent weapon trades, so things are proceeding smoothly. I understand that it has been 20 long years, Giorgio, and that you might no longer think much of the Family anymore, so I'm not going to force you to do anything for us." He paused, turning to shoot his nephew a serious look.

"But if you want to avenge your parents and our brothers, come home to Palermo. You know where to go. Otherwise, just know that the next time we meet, we'll meet as enemies."

Having said all that he wanted to say, Salvatore promptly put on his hat and wrapped his scarf around his neck, getting ready to leave.

" _Bonanotti_ (Good night) _, càru Giorgio. Ni videmu_ (I will see you)."


	2. Villarossa

**Author's Note:**

\- Updating! Striga's writing works wonders in making this fic beautiful :D  
\- Some change of plans in the story structure, so the previous chapter has been changed from 'Prelude' into 'Chapter 1'.  
\- All chapter titles are Italian/Sicilian words that will show up in the chapter eventually, so you don't have to research their translations ;)  
\- The 'Villarossa District' and the Bruno Family territory that appear in this chapter are fictional.

Enjoy.

* * *

 **【Chapter 2: Villarossa】**

 _"Giorgio—!"_

 _Giorgio perked up. He recognized the cheery voice, rising up from the garden through the open balcony door. Little Lucia Bruno, sitting by her elder brother on the bedroom floor, also heard the call, but paid it no heed; her eyes were fixed on the colourful alphabet blocks scattered before them, which to her seemed infinitely more interesting at the moment. The voice called again, louder this time._

 _"…Giorgiooooo!"_

 _Getting to his feet, the boy walked over to the balcony, to the copper-tinted iron railing that he could barely peek over, and looked down at the garden._

 _"Tonio! What do you want?"_

 _It was his little cousin. Antonio looked back up at him with a beaming smile on his face, the kind that he always had whenever he'd come to visit. Standing there in the grass under the hot late afternoon sun, he seemed completely unfazed by the heavy summer air, despite having run all the way from down the block (Zu Salvatore's place was just down the street, Giorgio knew, but it was still quite a bit of distance to go on foot)._

 _"I finished my work for today, so Mom said I can play outside." Antonio giddily waved his soccer ball over his head. "Let's go to the fountain square!"_  
 _"What? It's burning hot outside right now!"_  
 _"But if we go now we'll get more time to play!" His cousin protested._  
 _"Fine, fine," Giorgio laughed, "I'll come down. Wait over there."_

 _Their voices were loud, but the garden was huge and their neighbours never minded. Turning around, Giorgio strode across the room, where little Lucia was still inspecting the colourful alphabet blocks, and headed down the stairs. Passing the kitchen, he called out to his mother that he'd be back before dusk, and bounded out towards the warm summer wind._

* * *

The airplane's engines ran with a steady, monotonous hum, simultaneously quiet and deafening. Leaning towards the window with his chin resting on his hand, Giorgio watched the clouds drift by against the soft early morning sky with narrowed eyes.

 _Come home._ He recalled his uncle's words. _You know where to go._

His frown deepened. That had been two days ago. From the moment the echoes of Salvatore's footsteps faded away into the lonely midnight silence beyond his apartment door, their conversation had played over and over again in his mind, as if to erase any doubt that it ever happened. His uncle was alive, but he barely had any time to rejoice over the news.

 _The VSSE was behind our Family's fall._

He had given himself some 30 hours to process the revelation, but he was still no closer to settling his thoughts on it. Was it the truth? Or some contrived story to make him doubt the very people he was working with now? He couldn't say. Giorgio looked away from the lazy clouds. It shouldn't have mattered—whatever Salvatore was up to couldn't be anything good, that much was certain.

The right way to handle this situation, he had told himself, was to report the incident to the local VSSE headquarters, and wait for further instructions. If he had let them deal with it after taking him off the case instead, he wouldn't be having this headache right now. That was what he should have done. But he couldn't do it—instead he had shoved some bare necessities into the rattiest bag he could find in his apartment, hauled himself to the airport, and booked a last-minute ticket for this flight, headed straight to the home that he thought he had left for good. All because there were a million questions now rattling around in his head, and he couldn't bring himself to turn his back on his only chance to get them answered. He sighed. Salvatore picked his bait well.

A dull ding rang through the cabin as the seatbelt sign turned on, and the speakers overhead came to life with a landing announcement. As the scattered chatter in the cabin changed into a cacophony of metallic clacking, Giorgio leaned back and closed his eyes. At the very least, he wouldn't have to wait that much longer.

* * *

 _Palermo Outskirts, Sicily 9:37_

The old Bruno territory sat at the north end of town, near where the mountains start, and it was mid-morning when Giorgio finally reached its edges.

The Villarossa district was once a quiet residential neighbourhood, where modest houses painted in soft but jolly colours ran in rows along roads that climbed and dipped with the hilly terrain. In their gardens there had been tall, tall palms and bushes with vivid pink flowers, which swayed with a sleepy rhythm when the wind blew. But those serene houses were long gone, and in their place stood the dirty, desolate hellhole that now surrounded him.

Trash and loose gravel crunched under Giorgio's feet as he walked through the lonely street, lined with the charred carcasses of crumbling buildings whose grey walls leaned into each other on the verge of collapse. When the fire came it had stained the houses with soot and distorted the woodwork, and after the flames died down, time and weather had continued dismantling the buildings, peeling the paint and rusting the iron. Now they sat like worn-out mausoleums rising out of rubble and wood splinters, like blackened shells of bone bleaching under the summer sun, each sitting in its own plot of empty dirt. Some plots had been bordered with white tape tied to wooden poles planted in the corners—apparently someone had thought of reconstructing the place, but for some reason or another, the plans seemed to have fallen through. Perhaps no one really wanted to live in this blood-soaked land anymore.

All around him the air smelt of garbage and dust, the kind that didn't sting one's nasal cavity but hung persistently like a stagnant fog in the background, unremarkable but impossible to ignore.

Still, Giorgio drew in a breath and sighed.

 _Didn't think I'd come back here again._

His mind went back to an old dusty memory, one of the last ones which had been coloured with this same searing sunlight. He was a ten-year-old boy in a hospital waiting room, fiddling with a red toy car, sitting on one of those plastic chairs that had always been too hard for comfort. A man (forty-something-years-old, he guessed), who would've looked towering if he'd been standing upright, had gotten down on one knee in front of him. The man's hair was brown but lighter than his own, and though he had a sharp look in his eyes that reminded him of a hawk's gaze, for the moment it had softened into an amicable, if awkward, kindness. The man asked him a question.

 _Do you want to leave, or do you want to stay?_

The man said that he was with the police, and he had found him in the ruins of his house after it burned down, when the first of the firefighters and law enforcement officers arrived. Giorgio had never talked with a cop before—he had seen them around the streets, of course, but he had certainly never approached them, and in any case nobody in his family seemed to like them. But the man before him didn't seem at all threatening, and despite his initial cautiousness he had grown to find him likable.

The man said that he would be moving back home, to a city in the north, and if Giorgio would like to he could choose to come along. He then began to explain the processes involved, of course, things Giorgio would need to know before he made his decision, but he had already made up his mind.

He would leave. Everyone was dead, murdered by the people they had put their trust in, who they thought trusted them fully in return. The Brunos were supposed to be the most tightly-knit family in Palermo—people from the other families might turn on each other for personal gain, but their people would never do so. But they had, and now there was nothing left. Nothing but the blazing fire and the wails and screams of the people who died in it, and the echoes of gunshots by shooters who hadn't had to live with them, but which had tormented Giorgio in his feverish dreams every night since he arrived at the hospital.

If he could go somewhere far away, somewhere where he wouldn't have to ever see a single reminder of that nightmare again, he'd run off in a heartbeat.

So he ran, and it worked well enough. It took time, but as the years rolled by, the nightmares grew less and less frequent, and while the memories had never really left him, the new life that he poured all his energy into had done a great job at keeping him too busy to think much about the past. He had even thought that that past had finally become irrelevant.

Above him, wispy strands of curtains fluttered like ghosts in the wind.

 _Then why are you here?_

As Giorgio trod through an alley, one of the many in the maze of narrow roads that he and Antonio used to chase each other in, the wind seemed to whisper his own doubts at him. If it had truly not mattered anymore, why couldn't he resist coming here by himself? He quickened his pace, and weaved around one corner after another towards the wider streets, remembering the path as he went.

At last, he stopped.

Before him stood the Bruno family home, a large two-storey house that sat in the middle of a spacious garden, fenced by a wall twice his height. The building had been grand, once, as was befitting of its owner. But all that honour and prestige hadn't spared it from the razing flames, whose touch had melted it into a collage of ugly, broken shapes.

First there was the roof, which had caved in and left the top floor bared to the elements. Then there were the pillars and beams, which used to hold the building upright but were now little more than mangled sticks, and they leaned crookedly against each other like the dyingーold and tired. The windows and doorways, whose frames had been distorted by heat, hung open and empty like a skull's eyeless sockets, and over them the fire's blackened hand had tarnished the walls with a ghastly trail of soot, which two decades' worth of sun and rain had failed to wash away.

Then there was the graffiti—what surface the flames hadn't scorched had been turned into a canvas for layers upon layers of overlapping scribbling. Piled through the years, they had turned into a schizophrenic tapestry, fading into one another to form an illegible mess save one spot above the porch. Someone had scrawled "LA TERRA DEI MORTI" in hideous black letters on the weathered grey concrete.

"'The Land of the Dead', huh?" Giorgio mused to himself, in a voice barely audible even to himself.

He walked up to the wrought iron gate, still as towering as he remembered it to be despite how much taller he had grown. One of its doors had fallen onto the ground, sinking into the dirt, and the remaining door hung precariously at an angle, a single hinge keeping it from joining its friend in the ground. The ironwork was horribly distorted—someone must've run a car into it.

He ran his fingers along the twisted metal, feeling the rough rust-bitten surface against his skin. The sun had made the iron warm but not hot, the kind of warmth that seeped into his palms like it was the waves rolling in from a mid-August sea, and though its gnarly crust pricked against his hand he didn't move away, and gazed up at the house again.

In its better days, it had been a kinder-looking place, with its neatly tiled red roof and cream-coloured walls that had always reminded him of the underside of an orange peel. Giorgio had thought it was rather strange, not because it was an uncommon shade to paint a house, but because he didn't think that his father had liked such a lively colour. So one day he went to the porch, where Zu Salvatore was sitting, to voice his observations, and the older man had only chuckled and replied, "He only picked that colour because your mother likes it." In any case, it looked great with all the greenery in the garden, where palms grew among shrubs tall enough for Tonio to hide behind (his favourite was the one near the door), and scattered colonies of lavenders and lilies-of-the-Nile grew in bunches that little Lucia loved to pick dry from time to time.

The orange peel walls had made such a good backdrop for those days, and with the laughter and sun and the flowers it had looked so vibrant.

And how vibrantly, too, it had burned.

Giorgio winced. He jerked back from gate, as if the steel had turned into a burning stove under his hand. The air suddenly felt too humid, the sun too hot. As he felt his throat seize Giorgio closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe. _Get a hold of yourself. The gate isn't on fire and neither is the house._

But it had been on fire, once—the flames had started as one lump that shattered the window like a meteorite, and within a minute it had spread to the floor and the curtains and the roof. And then the air had turned so heavy and boiling hot that he had felt nothing but fire and smoke in his lungs no matter how much he inhaled. Lucia was crying, crying and choking as he pulled her closer, away from the burning walls. Mother was yelling at them to get outside over the crackling, but her voice was hoarse and broken. The smoke was choking her too. In her arms, she cradled a small bundle that neither cried nor moved.

Giorgio moved to lean against the wall by the gate and pressed his hand against his eyes, feeling the old but reassuring stone against his back. It had been a while since he'd thought about the fire, laughing and screaming between his ears and behind his eyelids, but he did what he'd always done—he forcefully smothered it, shoving the images away until they ebbed away and gradually died down.

He wanted to laugh at himself. All these years working for the VSSE, jumping from one highly explosive mission to the next, all over the globe, and he had never flinched before the flames, not even once. Strange that a long-dead fire would be the one to get to him. Or maybe it was just this too-hot July heat.

He pushed himself off the wall, letting out a quiet sigh, and glanced back at the house. He knew how the memory always ended. His eyes wandered to the side of the house, behind which the kitchen door was; they had been trying to escape from there. Too bad the people who were after them had already gotten there first. The newspapers and tabloids had all phrased it the same way in the following days: the Bruno family boss' wife and children, shot down right outside their own home by his own men.

Men who, according to his uncle, had been controlled by someone else.

Giorgio looked up at the ruins of his house, at its skeletal frames that reached up towards the sky. If what Salvatore said was true, and the massacre that night two decades ago was orchestrated by the VSSE to obliterate every last member of the Bruno family, he wanted to know why. And if one of his uncle's people was here, he'd better start looking.

He was just about to turn around when he heard a man call out to him.

"Hey! Are you Signor (Mr.) Giorgio Bruno?" The man asked as he approached, hands in the pockets of his hooded jacket.

He was a huge, somewhat burly middle-aged man, quite a bit taller than Giorgio. From the bulk of his form, one could tell that he had trained his physique extensively.

Giorgio studied the man carefully, but didn't reply.

The man didn't wait for a response as he stopped before him and looked around, his eyes darting between the alleyways and the empty houses. Satisfied that the place seemed to be deserted, he leaned in and continued in a hushed voice.

"Could you be here for matters regarding the Bruno Family?"

Giorgio frowned. He had no idea who this man was, and no way to ascertain his identity. But there was no other living soul in the area, and who else would assume what he was here for? What was for certain was that the man didn't look like some random hoodlum. He decided to take his chances, and replied carefully.

"Yes. I have come to see Signor Salvatore. …If you would be so kind as to lead me to him."

"I see," the man said, before turning around and motioning for Giorgio to follow him. "This way, then."

Giorgio nodded and promptly followed, but kept his guard up.

The man slipped into one of the alleys leading away from the house. He didn't try to strike up a conversation, and trudged along silently without looking back. Giorgio tailed after him without any difficulty, but even as he went he glanced around, wondering where they were going. They were moving further and further away from the main street. If they kept going, they would reach the mountainside—was that where his uncle was holed up?

Then the man made a sudden turn, down a path Giorgio was unfamiliar with. When had this alley cropped up here? Up ahead, his guide stopped. They had reached a dead end.

Giorgio glanced up at the decrepit walls surrounding them. The amount of scrawling on them made the space more claustrophobic than it really was. He looked back at the man, who still had his back to him.

"So, is this another meeting point?"

Giorgio shifted his weight from one foot to another. The bag hanging from his shoulder wasn't heavy, but all this walking and rising heat seemed to add to its weight. The man sighed heavily.

"…Agent Bruno, I have to say, I'm quite disappointed."  
"…?!"

The man suddenly pulled his hands out of his pockets and Giorgio leapt back just in time to evade a knife slash to his throat.

The strike left the man's defenses wide open, but Giorgio was in no position to counter as he lost his balance and fell back.

Reflexively righting himself as he fell to the ground, he blindly launched himself away from his assailant, this time narrowly avoiding a powerful downward stab from the man's other knife. Broken glass and sharp rocks cut into his skin as he tumbled onto the ground, but he had accomplished his goal—having put some distance between the man and himself, Giorgio leapt to his feet and glared at his attacker.

"What's the meaning of this?! Who are you?!" He demanded.

His bag had gotten thrown off in the short scuffle. His hand was ready over the knife in his back pocket, now the only thing he had to defend himself with. He tried to calm his pounding pulse—in contrast, his guide-turned-enemy seemed at ease, and even a bit smug.

"Ercole Russo, VSSE," the man said dryly, "From the national HQ. You might remember me from your time in Roma."

The introduction caught Giorgio by surprise, but he didn't let it show. Before him Ercole seemed to be gloating, and before he could place a memory to the name, he continued.

"Look at you, Agent Bruno—"

Ercole walked closer as he spoke with disgust, watching Giorgio with the eyes of a hungry wolf.

"Always one of the best, the pride of the Italian branch. Our superiors had always liked you."

For every step he took towards him, Giorgio took a step back, never letting Ercole close the gap between them. What the hell was his problem? The man looked older than him, likely a senior agent. Had he slighted him somewhere? Giorgio reported to the regional headquarters in Milan; he had gone to their Rome office only twice, thrice, and he didn't remember ever starting a fight with anyone there.

"And yet here you are, fraternizing with criminals!" His voice rose as he punctuated that last word with an angry sweep of a knife. "Two days ago in Milan, we finally managed to get our first visuals of the man behind the recent illegal weapon trades in the area, right after your operation in that warehouse. And guess what, the next thing we know, we got reports saying that that very same man was having a chat with you at your apartment!"

Ercole slowed down and stopped. Giorgio immediately took stock of his surroundings. They had reached the entrance of the alley, and now roads stretched open all around him, leaving him no cover to his right, left or back. He gritted his teeth.

"And then just like that we found you here, right where that man told you to go." Here Ercole's voice softened to a chilling coo as his gloating smirk turned outright predatory. Giorgio rushed to regain his footing in the argument he felt he was quickly losing.

"That was a misunderstanding! I came here for an investigation!"  
"You can explain yourself during the interrogation," Ercole said coldly. "I reported my findings, like a good agent,"—he threw a poisonous glare at Giorgio—"and the VSSE labeled you a dangerous target to be captured, along with all your other associates. Alive, preferably…"

A triumphant tone bubbled dangerously under the ice.

"…but dead, if it can't be helped."

Giorgio pulled out his folding knife as Ercole lunged at him for an upward slash. Giorgio couldn't get a strike in, however, and it wouldn't have been a wise choice—the combat knives Ercole had were sturdier than his own, and the way he handled both of them left very few openings for him to counter. Either way, he could see no positive outcome from wounding another VSSE agent. He'd have to escape this fight somehow.

As Giorgio scrambled for a plan, Ercole bore down on him with diabolical fervor.

"You're always everyone's favourite, Agent Bruno!" He seemed to relish chasing his nigh-defenseless target down, murderous force driving every swing of his knife. "The bosses only looked at _you_ , and no one else—and look how you've repaid them!"

Giorgio had no idea what delusional madness had consumed the other agent, but at this point the logic of it mattered little. The man seemed to have no plans of capturing him alive, set on straight up killing him instead. Giorgio's warrant was a convenient way to satisfy his jealousy.

Backed up against a wall after evading another blow, Giorgio saw Ercole's knife come straight at his face. A narrowly executed sidestep saved him by mere inches from the blade, now buried deep in a gap in the wall.

He saw his chance, and swung his knife up to Ercole's arm.

The blade caught near his wrist, slicing through cloth and flesh. Ercole yelled, more an enraged roar than pained cry as he let go of the knife stuck in the cracked concrete. Taking the opening that the momentary distraction provided, Giorgio dashed away from the madman's shadow and ran.

He caught a glance of his abandoned bag, sitting undisturbed in the alleyway, but he could worry about it later. If he slowed down now, he'd be as good as dead.

A roar came from close behind him, much closer than he had expected. Giorgio stumbled, trying to make a turn to throw off his pursuer, but he had barely changed his direction when something crashed into his side.

It was Ercole—the bloodthirsty agent had taken his chances and launched himself at Giorgio, sending them both off their feet and hurtling onto the ground. They hit the dirt with a heavy thud, and a second later he was pinned under the bigger man, putting all of his strength into pushing back the hand pressing down on the combat knife hovering millimeters away from his face.

"This is the end, Agent Bruno…!" Ercole growled, a cold, menacing grin spreading across his features.

"Ngghhh…!" Giorgio struggled to hold him back, breathing through gritted teeth. His vision was swimming. His head had hit the dirt when they crashed down on the gravel, which was now sharply digging into his back as Ercole weighed down on him. His grip was also slipping; his crazed attacker had barreled into his shoulder hard, and his whole arm now seared with pain. With every muscle in his body screaming, he found it harder and harder to focus.

 **BANG!**

"Arghh!"

The resounding crack of a gunshot ripped through the alley, and Giorgio felt a wet splatter hit his cheek. The weight on top of him had also suddenly lifted—someone had shot Ercole in the shoulder.

" _Minchia!_ I missed!" A frustrated voice cursed from further down the path.

"…!?"

Giorgio twisted around to look at the newcomer. Down the alley stood a stranger who had dark brown hair, a silver handgun in hand. He looked a little younger than Giorgio himself, and with his crisp navy-blue three-piece suit he looked completely out of place in the dusty backroad.

"Out of the way! I can't hit him!"

The young man's order snapped Giorgio's attention back to the present and he rolled away from his prone position, scrambling over towards his surprise saviour. Ercole grunted in pain behind him, but the wounded agent had no intention of going down just yet.

"Curse you…" he growled, raising his voice and bellowing. "Men!"

A group of armed agents, the initials of the VSSE emblazoned across their uniform, sprung out from around the nearby corners, their guns trained on Giorgio and his stunned ally.

"His connection with the enemy leader has been confirmed!" Ercole barked. "Take out the traitor!"

The VSSE backup opened fire on them without question. Giorgio yanked his new friend by the arm and flung them both behind a corner.

"And who are _you_?!" Giorgio had to yell to be heard over the gunfire, which was now chipping pieces off their cover. His question was answered with the shoving of something hard and weighty into his hands—a gun.

"Let's get out of here first," the young man said, ejecting the empty magazine from his gun and slamming a new one in. "Then we'll talk! Ready? Follow me!"

Giorgio squinted at the stranger, sensing something familiar in his mischievous smirk as he slipped around him and dashed back out into the open.

The shower of bullets followed them as they ran and the agents gave chase. The man zipped around one turn after another with ease, passing in and out of streets and abandoned buildings to disorient their pursuers. They bounded into a doorless house and out from a hole in its crumbling wall, kicking up dust and grit—the hoodlums camped there yelled out in surprise and scattered like rats, away from the ringing shots as their path stirred the entire block into chaos.

Giorgio kept his eyes on the back of the man's deep blue suit jacket and followed him closely. They were headed outwards, to the northeastern end of the area. Up ahead he spotted a rotting balcony looming precariously over the narrow alley, its support beams in splinters. He fired a few rapid shots at it as they ran past underneath, and it came down with a crash, hitting the ground behind them. He heard the shocked yells coming from the startled agents—whispering an apology under his breath, he could only hope none of them got hurt too badly.

"Just a little bit more…!"

The man in front of him was running out of breath, and Giorgio hoped that they were really almost there.

The two ran into another alley, but quickly skidded to a stop in the middle when they saw what was ahead of them.

"Freeze!"

A row of armed agents stood blocking their path, pointing their machine guns at them as more came in from behind.

Giorgio and the man beside him eyed them warily. A flurry of boots and metallic clicking gathered behind them—the remaining agents hunting them had caught up too, cutting off their only other exit. One of them barked.

"Agent Bruno, you're under arrest. Come quietly."

"…"

Giorgio glanced around him. They were completely, hopelessly surrounded. Was this how it would end? All that running, and he'd only wind up getting thrown into an interrogation room while the answers he sought were buried forever. Somehow that frustrated him more than whatever that madman Ercole might have in mind for him.

It surprised him, then, when his companion's smirk returned to his face.

"Heh, sorry to tell you this, but you're too late."

He brought his fingers to his lips and made a loud high-pitched three-tone whistle, one whose echoes seemed to blanket all the alleys around them before sinking into an unnatural silence. The VSSE agents started, and quickly glanced around, alert and nervous.

Then it happened. In response to the signal, a wave of armed men, their black suits sharp against the grey of the rooftops and the alleyways, poured out from behind every doorway and crumbling wall, aim ready and fixed on their shocked enemies. The agents, finding themselves suddenly outnumbered, balked before the imposing sight. Giorgio glanced at the man beside him. His expression had turned victorious.

"This is our territory!" He roared, his voice like a lion's as he turned the table on his hunters. "I'll show you the price of messing with the Bruno Family!"

He raised his hand. "Men, take them down!"

At the command, his subordinates fired down on the agents, who scrambled to fight back. The air around them was suddenly thick with lead and dust as it exploded into cacophony.

"Giorgio! This way!"

Giorgio snapped his line of sight to the man, who had rammed and broken through a thinner point in the wall of disoriented agents. As he followed suit, he heard people yelling at him to stop, but no one chased them as they slipped into a building, down its cellar, and closed the trapdoor, leaving the chaos of the shootout far behind them.

* * *

The tunnel was quiet, lit only by sunlight filtering down from the grating of storm drains overhead. Having run far enough that the noise of the gunshots was no longer audible, his companion had slowed down and stopped. Giorgio slowed down behind him, and for a few seconds only their ragged breathing filled the rumbling silence, save the occasional water dripping somewhere out of sight.

There had been a bored-out path in the cellar, which had led to this tunnel. Giorgio studied his surroundings between heaving breaths. It was some kind of sewer system, dry at the moment but bound to be filled with water when it rained.

 _Well_ , he thought, _a classic secret passage_.

He looked back at the other man, who, having finally caught his breath, straightened up with a relieved sigh.

"Phew. That was close."

The man turned around to face him. Giorgio straightened up too, and remembered that he wasn't out of the woods yet. He still had no idea who this man was, although his actions had convinced him that he was not a threat.

"Are you one of Zu… One of Salvatore Bruno's men?"  
"…"

The man seemed taken aback by the question, but then let out an airy laugh.

"Well, you can say so—the one who was supposed to pick you up, actually. I guess it's hard to tell, I could hardly recognize you myself! To be fair, it has been 20 years since we last played together…"

The young man fidgeted embarrassedly for a moment, and as the realization dawned on Giorgio, he broke into a warm smile and threw open his arms.

"It's me, Antonio. How I've missed you!"


	3. Teatro

**【Chapter 3: Teatro】**

 _VSSE regional headquarters, Porta Nuova, Milan 10:31_

Evan sat uncomfortably on the couch, alone in the middle of the lounge in the VSSE's Milan office. The room's air conditioning was on at full blast, but its steady blaring did little to calm the tumult in his mind.

Despite it being a scorching hot summer day outside, the room was freezing, and he wrapped his arms around himself. If Giorgio was here, he'd ask him if he was alright; maybe he'd even offer to go and ask the staff to have the air conditioning turned down. But Giorgio wasn't here.

Two days ago they had fought together at the warehouse, and yesterday, since their investigation team had to process whatever they found there for clues, Giorgio and Evan had been given the day off to rest.

To Evan, this had been the perfect chance to slip in a vacation itinerary. He had never been to Milan before, but there were a few local landmarks that had caught his interest, such as the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, with its glass domes and good luck mosaics, and the massive Milan Cathedral in the piazza that formed the heart of the city, and if he had time to spare he'd probably even go see the Arco della Pace, a triumphal arch behind the Sforza Castle which to him looked like the Arc de Triomphe's more petite cousin. But as much as he wanted to see these places, the idea of being able to drag Giorgio along for his sightseeing trip sounded just as fun, and so, the moment HQ notified them that they had the day off that morning, Evan had scrambled to ring Giorgio up about his plans for the day.

The two of them had mostly only met up for business reasons, so a free day together was something to be giddy about. Evan was certainly amused—how would the old man handle being turned into an impromptu tour guide? Then again, he thought, considering how well-read Giorgio was, he'd probably be able to pull it off adequately. There'd been a smile stretching across Evan's face as he waited through the call's dial tone. He was surely looking forward to seeing it. It was a disappointment, then, when Giorgio turned down his offer.

"Not feeling too good today. You go ahead and have fun."  
"What? You sure you're okay? Should I drop by? We can go and see the doctor together."  
"It's alright, I just need to lie down for a while. Enjoy yourself."  
"Okay… I'll take photos. Get well soon!"

It was a perfectly normal conversation, and Evan, though crestfallen, had suspected nothing. And then some VSSE agents suddenly appeared at his hotel room three hours ago, and when they told him that Giorgio was now one of the primary suspects of their current case, he couldn't believe his ears.

He was still processing that revelation when they told him that he was under arrest, since in being Giorgio's partner there was the possibility that Evan had been conspiring with him. But after a round of rigorous questioning ascertained only that he didn't even know about Giorgio's disappearance, they had left him in this lounge, where he was to stay until they gave him further instructions.

Heaving an exasperated sigh as he crashed against the back of the couch, Evan took out his phone, and checked for the umpteenth time if any of the messages he had tried sending Giorgio had been answered. They weren't even marked as read. His thumb absentmindedly pressed the call button again for the twentieth time in an hour, and he watched the phone icon buzz on the screen although he knew no one would pick up on the other side.

'Hello. Giorgio here. I'm afraid I'm unavailable right now. Please leave a message and I'll get back to you.'

The voice in the recorded message was calm and professional, if a little crackly, but to Evan it sounded unpleasantly cold and distant. Ending the call, he pocketed the phone, leaned back, and pressed the back of his hand against his eyes.

Things weren't going well. The last time he heard, their higher-ups had put up an arrest warrant for Giorgio, who was to be captured dead or alive. Giorgioーhis rival, his partner, his best friend, his teacher… How could he possibly have let this happen right under his nose? This morning when they brought him in, this very lounge had been bustling, with an unusually high number of agents rushing here and there in the hubbub, no doubt on their way to hunt down their newest target. If only—If only he had been more persistent about visiting him yesterday… It was all his fault.

His eyes stung as he fought back frustrated tears.

"—Agent Bernard."

A firm, weighty voice brought him back. Evan quickly straightened up, and looked behind him in the direction it had come from.

A man with a tall and well-built frame was walking towards him. He seemed to be at least twenty years Evan's senior, but had dark hair and handsome features that wouldn't have looked out of place on the cover of a high-end fashion magazine. He moved towards him from across the room with purposeful, decisive steps, his deep red suit coat standing out starkly against the office's minimalistic white walls and tiles. Evan shot to his feet as he approached, and the man stopped before him.

"Sorry to have kept you waiting. I'm Agent Domenico Castiglione," he said, introducing himself. "I'm here about Agent Bruno's case."

Domenico's words were concise and economical. Evan nodded, and when he spoke his voice sounded sheepish in comparison.

"May I know how things are going?"

The VSSE always worked quickly on any mission. It wouldn't be surprising for him to hear that they had located Giorgio and had gone after him. Domenico only confirmed his suspicions.

"Right—about an hour ago, we received intel that he'd arrived in the Falcone–Borsellino Airport in Palermo early this morning. So the VSSE dispatched Agent Ercole Russo, one of our trusted senior agents who was on duty in the area, to meet up with him and investigate."

Domenico paused, looking away for a moment with a troubled look.

"Agent Russo reported that the meeting had broken out into a fight. He confirmed that Giorgio was working with the enemy—he even sent in some visuals of him firing at our men alongside one of the criminals. They've lost track of him for now, but the higher-ups have informed all the VSSE agents in Italy to stay on high alert and take immediate action if they see him. He has betrayed us."

Evan stared at Domenico as he spoke. Giorgio, working with the enemy? Impossible. His incredulity grew with every word he heard, but at the same time he didn't think the man in front of him was lying. His attempt to process the information clashed with a voice screeching in denial at the back of his mind, and before he knew it, panic took over.

"No," he said, shaking his head. "No. This can't be true. There must have been a mistake."

"It's the truth," Domenico said, unfazed. He didn't budge, not even when Evan grabbed his shirt by the collar.

"It can't be!" Evan's voice was louder, but it was more pleading than threatening. "I know Giorgio. I know him, and he'd never do such a thing!"

"People have been known to do crazy things."

Domenico's reply was flat as he looked straight at Evan. The man was calm, and the distant look in his eyes made it hard for Evan to read what he was thinking. His grip on the other agent's shirt loosened as he slowly pulled away, having never felt so alone in his life. Moving back, Evan let himself fall onto the couch, nauseous and tired. He felt as though he would break down any second. Domenico sighed.

"People have been known to do crazy things," he repeated, his voice firm, "but not without reason. If Giorgio, of all people, decided that working with the enemy was the best choice, he must have had a strong argument to back it up."

Evan looked up at him, doubt evident in his eyes. Was he…Did he just defend Giorgio's actions? His face lit up with new hope at the thought. Domenico took a step closer, stood over him and leaned in. His expression no longer confused Evan, and he recognized a kind of bold determination in his face.

"Agent Bernard, I have come to request your cooperation in finding out the truth behind this incident and bringing your partner back. Alive."

* * *

Evan sat next to the driver's seat in Domenico's car as they drove away from the VSSE headquarters. As they passed one intersection after another, he looked outside the window, watching the bustling crowd and clustered buildings roll by like frames in a film roll. The Milanese streets which had looked adventurously bright and beautiful to him just yesterday now felt greyed out in his distress. As they took a turn around a busy corner, Domenico spoke up.

"We're going to see a man called Silvio Ambrosini," he said, his eyes never leaving the road, "he's an officer working with the city's police department—and Giorgio's adoptive father. They were close, so hopefully he'd be able to provide us with some clues about his motives."

Evan was quiet as Domenico spoke, his gaze fixed on the scenery flying past outside the window. As they passed through a narrow street, he caught a glimpse of a modest white-and-grey stone façade, hardly distinguishable from the surrounding buildings if it weren't for the etching that graced the top wall: a halo-sporting figure driving a chariot over the clouds. As they drove by and he lost sight of the momentary glimpse, Evan absently noted that it was the Teatro alla Scala, the city's world-famous opera house.

He remembered how Giorgio had told him about it once. La Scala was one of the most prestigious opera houses in Italy, whose monotone walls hid within them a grand auditorium decked in vibrant gold and red. Most of Italy's greatest operatic artists, many of the best singers from around the world, and even Mozart himself had once performed on its resplendent stage, facing two thousand viewers watching them from the spacious hall and balconies under the glittering crystal chandeliers. There the long list of performers expressed every line, every note, and every motion to the best of their abilities. Yet it wasn't always a rosy audiovisual paradise—there were wolves among the audience, fanatics in the crowd, who would cheer the loudest at performances they judged to be excellent, but also tear the performers to shreds at the slightest perceived failure. And failures were remembered for a long time—quality and perfection were not only expected, but demanded.

But now Evan's mind was far away from the opulence and savagery of La Scala as he thought about the actor and the stage, a man reading his lines out to the world. They know his script, but do they know its speaker? He knew it was hardly the right time to start waxing philosophical, but he couldn't help it. When he said he knew Giorgio, he'd believed it all his heart, but strangely enough, from the moment the words left his mouth, his conviction had begun to slowly sink into doubt.

How much did he really know him? Giorgio was never much of a talker, and whenever he spoke it had mostly been out of necessity. A brisk go-take-that corner, a quick enemy-on-the-roof, a prompt we'll-meet-up-at-the-lobby. For all their conversations, Giorgio never told Evan much about himself, and now Domenico was telling him that they were going to see his adoptive father! He never told him he was adopted. Not that he remembered any point in their one-year history when that tidbit was even vaguely relevant, but still… Evan wanted to seethe, but the weight in his chest felt a little different from anger.

"—Agent Bernard, are you alright?"

Evan jumped a little, snapped out of his thoughts. The words, the tone was so familiar that he almost thought Giorgio was there sitting next to him. He looked beside him and of course, it was only Domenico there, who chuckled a little at his confusion.

"Worried about Giorgio?"

"Yeah… Sorry."

"Haha, it's Giorgio. He'll be fine. For awhile, at least."

Domenico's voice was lighthearted, with a tinge of humour even. Evan raised an eyebrow at the familiarity. Nestling back into the seat, he decided to pop a question.

"Say… You both work in Milan. Do you usually get tagged with each other or something?" Evan asked tentatively. Domenico smiled.

"Better. I was his mentor. Giorgio was assigned as my partner when he first joined the VSSE, much like you were assigned to Giorgio. Good times," he replied. Evan's eyes widened.

"Why didn't you tell me earlier?!" He nearly jumped out of his seat, as if the revelation instantly made the other agent an old friend. Evan had been wary around Domenico earlier, but now their working together filled him with excitement.

"I've read your work records, Agent Bernard. It seems that Giorgio has become a fine teacher himself. I'm glad." Domenico observed Evan with friendly amusement as he spoke. He seemed to be warming up to him as well.

"Well, I do my best!" Evan grinned. He felt glad that his anxiousness was quickly lifting. A thought struck him.

"But if you're Giorgio's mentor and you're on this mission… Wait, _I'm_ on this mission. How did this happen? I thought the higher-ups wouldn't let me get involved."

"No one said that the higher-ups did."

Domenico's answer was frank. He didn't even look at Evan, who almost had a heart attack.

"What?! You mean we're going against orders right now?!"

It was reputedly hard to be allowed to take part in a mission where the enemy was a family member or a close friend. There had been cases in the past where such connections had resulted in emotional instability and clouded judgements. Nevertheless, Domenico looked determined.

"They took us off the mission, actually. But I saw how you were in the lounge. Whether I had invited you to join me or not, you'd make a move by yourself sooner or later, wouldn't you?" He said, leaning back. "Either way, I told them that we had an emotional breakdown and are currently taking a break together, so they shouldn't come looking for us. Let's get this over with before anyone notices anything."

"…"

Evan knew what he said was true. He leaned back against his seat as well, closing his eyes and preparing himself for the long and arduous journey ahead. He sighed.

"They're going to kill us," he said, "But it'll be worth it."


End file.
